The amount of mail received by businesses and federal, state and local government agencies continues to grow daily. For example, the large volumes of remittance mailings received by utility companies, department stores and other retail enterprises, banks and other lending institutions, insurance companies, credit card companies, etc., just to name a few, demonstrate the need for efficient handling of large volumes of incoming mail. Moreover, the U.S. Post Office indicates that daily volumes of such mailings will continue to increase appreciably in the near future. The use of an automated, high speed remittance processors is an essential component of any efficient office procedure for handling such large bulk volumes of remittance mailings.
The contents of each envelope are generally referred to as a transaction, and may consist of one or more documents including one or more invoices and/or one or more checks. The most common transaction consists of a single invoice stub (remit) and an accompanying payment check.
According to conventional methods of automated or semi-automated remittance processing, the contents, such as an invoice and an accompanying check, are processed by opening the envelope, extracting the contents from the envelope, placing the contents in the proper sequence and orientation, and then stacking the contents into groups or batches. The opening, extraction, sequencing and orienting of the invoices and checks has been effected manually, and more recently by the use of automated or semi-automated equipment. Once arranged in stacks, the sequenced and oriented invoices and checks are then separated into groups of documents.
This grouping, referred to as batching, has, in the past, typically been performed manually by inserting batch tickets into the stacks of documents to physically define selected batches of documents. The stacks of batched invoices and checks are then transferred to a separate remittance processing device and fed through the device multiple times to effect the necessary remittance processing.
In some prior art systems, the stacks of invoices and checks are transferred to a separate remittance processing device after the documents have been extracted from the envelopes. In such transfers, errors may arise in determining which documents belong to which distinct transactions. Errors may arise in defining transactional boundaries, because the documents have already been separated from the envelopes that physically and accurately define the boundaries before processing is commenced.
Therefore, the remittance processing apparatus must attempt to determine the transactional boundaries, based on the sequence of the documents that are fed through the device. If the sequence of documents is not predetermined and precisely maintained, the transactional boundaries may be misplaced and transactional integrity lost. For example, if more than one check is enclosed with a single invoice, it becomes difficult, after the extraction has already been performed, to ascertain whether the additional check should be included with the preceding or the following transactional documents. As a result, a check from one transaction may be processed erroneously with an invoice from another transaction.
Other problems may also arise whenever the invoices and the checks are not in proper uniform sequence or in the proper orientation. For example, the lack of proper sequencing and orientation may cause misreads or errors during processing. If a check is being read, instead of an invoice due to an improper sequence, the appropriate information will not appear at the proper location during document imaging.
Current integrated remittance processing systems are available which attempt to maintain transactional integrity. Examples of this general type can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,054,6.20, 5,810,173, 5,842,577 and 5,842,693. These high speed remittance processing systems are designed to process clean, same-sized remittance mail containing a single check and bill stub, i.e., bulk mail. These prior art systems are capable of high volume throughput, opening large volumes of remittance mailing without causing damage to the contents, but only if the envelopes and remittance documents are the same size.
However, envelopes are generally not the same size. Even in circumstances where customers are provided with standardized return envelopes, customers may frequently choose to respond via odd-sized envelopes. Furthermore, other activities, such as promotions, commercial announcements, coupons, and return correspondence can vary greatly in size and shape, and affect the transactional throughput.
"White mail", also known in the remittance processing and document processing industry as "exception mail", is a challenge unique thereto. This mail is represented by mixed sized envelopes and/or mixed and varying contents, such as, for example, full page, triple folded documents and/or folded checks. The prior art systems fail to accommodate such white mail in an efficient, non-damaging manner.
Specifically, the problem of opening an edge of white mail, without damaging the contents, has not been satisfactorily solved. Typically, such white mail must be manipulated, either by vibrating machines or by hand, to force the contents away from the edge to be cut. Another solution is to use an opener that must be handfed by the operator, again affecting throughput time and efficiency.
Moreover, it should be noted that the above discussed prior art systems generally provide a means for opening the envelope and extracting the white mail contents without otherwise processing the contents. Generally, any attempts to solve these problems have used large multi-station machines or two or more machines, an example of which is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 4,934,892. Generally, such machines open the envelopes on one or two sides and serially move the envelopes to an extraction station. At the extraction station, vacuum fingers are employed to engage the panels of the envelopes so that the contents may be extracted by the operator.
One major drawback of these machines is their failure to maintain transactional integrity. The contents must be moved to a second machine or station for further processing, which generally employ vacuum arms for extraction. The extraction time on such machines is limited to the cycle time that the vacuum arms engage and pull apart the envelope panels. The operator is limited to the amount of time to extract the contents. Furthermore, the vacuum can bleed through the panels and hold the contents in place, making extraction difficult.
One solution has been to employ opener/extractors that open the envelopes on two or more sides, and move the envelope panels away from the contents without using vacuum arms. One such opener/extractor is disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,893,454 which is incorporated herein by reference. A feature of that opener/extractor is that the system folds the panels away from the contents. However, while the disclosed opener/extractor solves some of the above-discussed problems, it does not provide a stand-alone system for opening, extracting and scanning/processing white mail, while ensuring transactional integrity.
In accordance with the present invention, a system and method are provided for opening the envelopes, extracting the contents therefrom, reordering and reorienting the contents, if necessary, and imaging and storing data regarding the contents so that the association among the contents is maintained. Proper imaging of the contents and storage of the data will ensure transactional integrity during subsequent remittance processing. Moreover, maintaining transactional integrity for each transaction provides a easy method for resolving discrepancies should a mistake occur.